


i'm trying to

by fliptomybside



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-12 22:43:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9094021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fliptomybside/pseuds/fliptomybside
Summary: Kendall kisses people, loses sight of things, and tries to find them again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I figured I'd written enough queer hendall/kengi that I could post it on here, so. All of this takes place in [saysthemagpie's](http://saysthemagpie.tumblr.com) verse that lives on tumblr, so full credit to her for inspiring what I've written. All of these snippets were previously posted on my [tumblr](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com).

The sun’s relentless on the back of her neck, and Kendall thinks idly about the strappy, almost non-existent lingerie that she has tucked away. It’ll be uncomfortable on top of sunburn, she knows. It’ll be vaguely uncomfortable anyway, though. The point of lingerie isn’t being comfortable. Kendall knows this intimately, pun intended, with a childhood shaped by her older sisters picking themselves apart in next to nothing in front of mirrors.

“Need the sunscreen?” Harry mumbles next to her.

He has his sunglasses on and his phone resting on his chest. Kendall can’t tell if he’s looking at her or not, if he’s texting someone else. Wishing he were somewhere else, deep down, just like she is.

“Probably too late,” she says, voice still a little scratchy from the way she laughed herself to sleep last night, Harry’s hair spread out on the pillow next to her, room hazy with smoke. She leaned into his fingers when they dug into her sides. They didn’t have sex, and she’s not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed.

Harry doesn’t respond, and Kendall watches his thumbs move over the screen of his phone, lightyears faster than he talks. He’s pink at the temples, his forehead shiny with sweat, and Kendall feels the phantom of how she used to want him deep in her belly.

She doesn’t know how to verbalize it. Doesn’t want to throw a wrench in a picture perfect vacation, so she throws her leg over his instead.

Harry’s all hard lines and hot skin underneath her. There isn’t any softness to his body, but Kendall presses herself down against him, like if they’re close enough he’ll turn into someone else, like maybe she can dissolve him into the softness she’s looking for.

It doesn’t work. Obviously. Kendall didn’t think it would, but it’s still disappointing, the way Harry’s still unrelentingly Harry.

He snakes his ams around her, and it’s claustrophobic and safe all at once. A metaphor for her whole life these days, actually. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and she wants to worm her way out, even though she initiated it. But it’s safe, too. Not in the annoying, I need a man to keep me warm way, but it makes her life look like a pretty picture. No one will question this. Well. Some people will, because they question everything, Kendall thinks. But she and Harry make sense together, and she doesn’t hate it. Not all the time.

He presses his lips against her skin and Kendall leans into it, shuts her eyes tight and tries to just focus on the sensation rather than who she is and who she’s with. She can still lose herself in it, even if it’s fleeting.

-

She’s had sex with Harry enough times that she knows how he likes it. There’s a pointedness to the way he touches her, the way his tongue curls against her and his fingertips dig into her hips. He’s slow and deliberate about most things, and the way he eats her out isn’t any different.

Kendall stares up at the ceiling, gray in the dark, and arches her back when Harry sucks a bruise into her thigh. Her skin’s burning under his lips, and she knows it’ll be livid and obvious and a mark that shows she’s not that kind of girl. Not the kind of girl that thinks about her friend when Harry Styles is going down on her.

She chokes a little at that thought, and she can feel Harry smile against her skin. She hasn’t thought of him that way in a long time. Harry Styles. Mostly he’s just Harry, quiet and smiling and always half with her, half with someone else.

What would happen if we talked about it, Kendall thinks, biting down on her lip when Harry slides a finger inside her and circles her clit with his calloused thumb.

He’s staring up at her when she tears her eyes away from the ceiling, and for a split second, she’s terrified that he knows what she’s thinking, somehow. That she’s remembering that night in New York, holed up in Gigi’s apartment. That she is that kind of girl, the kind of girl that falls half in love with her best friend. Who wants things that he isn’t.

“‘y all right?” he rasps, lips shiny even in the dark. Kendall swallows hard. She can’t tell if he’s caught her out or not.

“Are you all right?” she asks, because all she does is deflect these days. Her voice sounds rough to her own ears. It’s good, she thinks. Very authentic. It all feels good, even if it’s not what she thinks about when she’s alone.

Harry cocks his head and curls his finger deeper inside her, and she clenches down on it, rocks against his palm a little like a challenge.

He’s still for a heart stopping second, and Kendall can feel the heat on her cheeks deepen, waits for him to open his big mouth and ask her what’s going on. He doesn’t though, just slides another finger along side the first and puts his head down.

His shoulders are too broad between her legs. He looks huge in her bed, but if she shuts her eyes against all of it, she can zero in on the hot swirl of his tongue and the way his curls feel between her fingers, tacky from the salty air. She can think about the way he’s making her feel and not anything else.

-

It’s all picture perfect. The water, St. Bart’s, the way she keeps catching Anne smiling at her when she thinks Kendall’s not looking, the careless weight of Harry’s arm when he throws it around her shoulders. It’s so perfect that she wants to crawl out of her skin, because she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t—she doesn’t not want it. But she doesn’t want it, either. She’s who everyone expects her to be, here on this boat, with Harry. Teen dream, her brain shouts, and Kendall remembers the painful wanting when she was a teenager. Which, obviously, wasn’t that long ago, but. It feels impossibly far away from who she is now.

Her camera’s resting on her stomach, and Harry’s got his matching one up like he’s about to take a photo of her, their legs tangled together and hair wild. She brings her camera up to her face on instinct. She hears his click, and she focuses on him, frizzy hair and long fingers, camera obscuring his face. It’s easy to imagine him grinning behind it.

-

She puts on the lingerie that night—black, lacy, something Bella would approve of—but she doesn’t make it to Harry’s room. She stares at herself in the bathroom mirror for a long time. The sharp jut of her hip bones and the downward curve of her mouth. The purple bruise on her inner thigh from last night. It all makes her want to crawl out of her skin.

She locks the bathroom door and runs a bath, gets in without even getting undressed. The water’s so hot it’s just the right side of painful. Kendall tries to do the deep breathing exercise Harry was going on about when he was still on tour, voice deep and earnest over the phone.

It kind of works, but Kendall thinks it’s more that she’s alone than anything else. The black lace looks obscene against her skin underwater. She slips her hand out of the water and fumbles over the side of the tub for her phone.

She knows better than to take pictures like this, she really does. Even though she’s done photo shoots wearing less, this feels different. Her hands are shaking so much that she almost drops her phone into the water.

She doesn’t send it to anyone, because she’s not that stupid. She texts Gigi, though, even though she knows she won’t get a response for hours.

_‘thought about you last night,’_ Kendall types out, fingers slick against the screen. She hits send before she lets herself second guess it.


	2. Chapter 2

Kendall lets Harry give her a ride, in the end. What’s one more embarrassment, she tells herself. She hopes she won’t remember it in the morning, even though she knows she’s not drunk enough to forget.

She stumbles getting into his car, and she watches his hands twitch reflexively out of the corner of her eye, like he wants to reach out and catch her. She’s glad he’s parked out back, away from all the prying eyes and flashes that light up her every move. It’s the last thing she needs right now, her lips still kiss swollen and red. They’d probably just run with the idea of her and Harry again, though, Kendall thinks, and for a second, she wonders if she could do it. Be that girl again. Or for the first time, whatever. Just the thought of it is exhausting, though.

 _Don’t need you,_ she thinks fiercely, because she doesn’t. Fuck. Doesn’t need Harry, doesn’t need anyone. She just wants everyone that she can’t have. Wants more than she’s allowed to have, it feels like.

She touches her lips, still tacky from Gigi’s lipgloss. Harry climbs into the driver’s seat next to her, and she slumps over, glass cool against her forehead as he starts the car. He pulls out into traffic, car smooth and quiet. He doesn’t turn the radio on, and Kendall’s not sure if she hates or is thankful for the silence.

It’s not a long ride. Harry parks outside her house but leaves the engine running. They sit in silence for a minute. Kendall focuses on the low hum of the engine and the way she can still taste Gigi in her mouth, almost masked by the bitterness of Zayn’s sneer.

“I wish you would talk to me,” Harry says, and his voice is slow and quiet but it rips Kendall out of her stupor. She can’t stop touching her lips and wondering if Harry knows what she’s been up to. If he’s just playing nice, pretending that everything is normal and fine when everything is the exact opposite.

She laughs and it feels good, even as it edges towards hysterical. Because this is all so wrong, so not what she thought her life would be, and all of their baggage is stifling any kind of honest conversation they could be having right now.

She’s still laughing as she trips out of the car, the edges of a headache creeping in. She slams the door behind her and kicks off her heels as she keys in her passcode.

Harry’s car is still sitting outside when she gets upstairs and looks out the window.


	3. Chapter 3

The hangover’s not even that bad when she wakes up, and she remembers everything with a hazy kind of clarity that makes her sick to her stomach in its own way. Her lower back hurts from sleeping on her stomach all night, and there’s a damp patch on her pillow where she drooled. Kendall groans and rolls over. She stares up at the ceiling and tries to focus on how gross her mouth tastes instead of the way Harry had to drive her home last night.

It kind of works. She lays there for another few minutes before forcing herself to stumble in the direction of the bathroom, white and blinding. She stares at herself in the mirror while she brushes her teeth, lets the sink run even though she knows it’s wasteful. Last night’s make up is smeared all over her face, her mascara darkening the shadows under her eyes.

She spits into the sink and watches the remains of her toothpaste bubble up then swirl down the drain. Her lips still feel tacky, like Gigi’s lipgloss is still there, even though logically Kendall knows it’s long worn off by now. She can still feel the burn of humiliation on the back of her neck when she thinks about the way Zayn looked at her, his own lips shiny with Gigi’s lipgloss. Mine, Kendall thinks fiercely, giving in to the stab of jealousy in her stomach.

The skin under her eyes is fragile and looks so thin that Kendall’s irrationally afraid she’ll tear it if she tries to take her make up off, so she turns on the shower instead and strips off last night’s clothes before climbing in.

The water’s almost too hot, but Kendall doesn’t let herself move from under the spray. She watches rivulets of water travel down her stomach before she hugs herself, fingers sliding into the gaps between her ribs. There aren’t any marks on her body. Nothing that gives away what she was up to last night, and normally she hates that kind of thing. Thinks it’s tacky, too possessive, too high school. But now she wishes she had something. A bruise at the corner of her jaw, right above the beat of her pulse, scratches on her back, bruises on her hips. Something. Anything to solidify it so that it exists in the aftermath. Outside of her head.

She throws up in the shower and blames it on the hangover.

-

Having a week off is terrible, because all it does is give her time to focus on the fact that she’s embarrassed herself and the small, persistent thought that Harry knows something, somehow. Kendall can’t decide if she wants him to know or not, or if she wants to know what’s going on inside his head. She’s not even sure if it’s something she can verbalize beyond, ha ha, so that night I was so drunk you had to drive me home I made out with Gigi in front of your ex band mate, and that sounds awful and trivial and not like what happened at all, even if it is.

She scrubs her house from top to bottom, even though it doesn’t need it. To get rid of lingering construction dust, she tells herself from her knees, a clean white baseboard filling her line of sight. She vacuums the couch and washes her sheets and airs out her bedroom and then bites her nails down the the quick and winces at the raw state of her cuticles.

The thought of sitting through a manicure is incomprehensible, some faceless woman touching her hands and frowning at the way Kendall’s chewed at them. She digs out her nail polish instead, probably the only thing in her house that’s still dusty, and an hour later, she’s got two uneven coats on that somehow look worse than her bare nails did.

 

She orders Domino’s for dinner and eats the whole pizza by herself. She doesn’t think about Harry, a few blocks away, and the way she hasn’t turned on her phone since last night, or the fact that she might not be able to look Gigi in the eye for months.

-

Glenne invites her to lunch at Food Lab a week later. Kendall has her suspicions as to why, even though she’s trying not to do the whole paranoid thing these days. Easier said than done, she thinks, flicking her ponytail at the photographer who’s camped out across the street from her driveway.

She pauses for a second after she backs out, looks him in the eye from behind her sunglasses and flips him off. The camera flashes even faster, and she sees red for a second, because she can’t escape this.

The rage has mostly dissipated by the time she hands off her keys to the valet. Glenne’s already there, hair effortless and perfect. Kendall pauses for a second, takes a deep breath and shoves her sunglasses up onto her head. She probably should’ve worn something other than yoga pants, but she was tired after the shoot yesterday, and Glenne’s invitation caught her off guard.

Kendall knows it doesn’t matter, that yoga pants and a t shirt are practically her uniform when she’s not working, but she still feels bare after seeing Harry sit outside her house, waiting to see if she got in okay.

“Hey,” she says, sliding into the chair across from Glenne.

“Missed you, Kenny,” Glenne says, locking her phone and putting it face down at the edge of the table. Kendall reaches for her own to follow Glenne’s lead and momentarily panics before remembering that she left it at home.

“You too, babe.”

Glenne’s eyes are searching her face, and it’s a dead giveaway. She knows, fucking Harry and his big, awful mouth. Kendall isn’t sure what he thinks he knows, but she’s sure he said too much. Always going on and on about how worried he is the second someone doesn’t beam in his direction like he’s the sun.

“So,” Glenne starts, and Kendall braces herself for the inevitable. Knows that she should be grateful for concerned friends, but all she wants to do is maybe buy an isolated island somewhere and stay there for the next year.

“How’ve you been lately? Feels like a month since we did lunch.”

Kendall exhales sharply, and she’s sure Glenne noticed that too, sure that she’s taking mental notes to report back to Jeff or Harry or fuck, her mom.

“Good, you know. Busy. Getting used to the house.” Kendall tries to keep her tone light. Her voice sounds totally alien.

“Mmm,” Glenne hums, taking a sip of water before her eyes drop down to the menu in front of her.

“Harry recommended this great salad, said he tried it last week. Do you know what you want?”

Kendall doesn’t suppress the urge to roll her eyes.

“Definitely not that salad,” she says, and Glenne looks up at her at that, brow furrowed with concern. Harry definitely talked to her, and Kendall swallows down the annoying feeling that Harryjeffglenne are doing that thing adults do, looking at each other over their kid’s head and talking with their eyes, even though that’s impossible because Kendall’s taller than all three of them and Jeff and Harry aren’t even here.

“Kenny,” Glenne starts.

“Listen,” Kendall interrupts before she can stop herself, “I’m sure Harry’s like, concerned or whatever, but how many times have you had to hold his hand coming out of a party? It happens to the best of us. Some of us more than others, and by some of us I mean Harry Styles, but whatever.”

To Glenne’s credit, she doesn’t flinch when Kendall word vomits all over her. She takes a sip of water like she’s preparing for battle, and Kendall chokes back a nervous laugh.

“I think he’s just worried,” Glenne says after a minute of silence. “Like, he said you seemed…off. I know Harry’s, you know, but he was worried after he didn’t hear from you.”

“Well.” Kendall pauses. Letting anyone inside her head is not on the table here, pun intended, but she still feels that sick nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach, like Glenne’s figured her out before Kendall herself has. “We’re neighbors, so. He could’ve just like. Walked over, instead of tattling. And I’m fine, Glenne. I’m just busy, and tired, like everyone else. It’s been a long year.”

Glenne purses her lips, like she wants to say more, to press at Kendall’s private bruises, but she tucks her hair behind her ear instead.

“Want to get fries? Like, the biggest plate they have?”

Kendall feels the corners of her mouth start to curl up in a smile.

-

It only takes two hours to regret the fries, the oil settling uncomfortably in her stomach. The same paparazzi is still across from her house when she gets back. She flips him off again.

Her phone’s lit up with messages when she locks the kitchen door behind her. Some from Lauren, asking about shopping, one from her mom about the shoot. One from Harry that just says _‘hey.’_

Kendall feels all the anger she felt earlier bubble back up. The screen of her phone swims in front of her eyes, all the letters blurring together. She blinks a few times before it comes back into focus.

 _‘can you fuck off as far as possible,’_ she types out, fingers shaking.


	4. Chapter 4

She’ll give Harry credit. It only takes him another day to come knocking at her door, quiet and a little unsure. Kendall lets him sit for a minute, stares the slightly grainy video feed of her front porch where Harry’s stood, pigeon toed and long haired and exactly what she should want.

She thinks pretending she’s not home. Or letting him see that she’s there and deliberately ignoring him. Both options are tempting, but she buzzes him in in the end. Yelling at him face to face will be more satisfying.

His hair looks freshly washed, and Kendall swears she can smell the Kiehl’s shampoo she bought him for Christmas. It hits her hard, and she can almost feel the barely there rocking of the yacht beneath her feet and the sun hot on her shoulders.

“What part of fuck off did you not understand?”

Harry furrows his brow at that, goes to run his fingers through his hair before realizing he’s got it in a bun, so he just ends up scratching at his scalp. He looks so fucking stupid, Kendall thinks. So, so stupid, and impossibly young, and like someone who shouldn’t be sticking his fingers in her business.

“Thought I should apologize in person,” he rumbles, and fuck, she always forgets how deep his speaking voice is. She’s compartmentalized him in a way. Put him in a little box where he’s the teen dream she had a poster of, and the voice on the first CD she had in her own car when she turned sixteen. He’s easier to deal with when she thinks of him as someone she hasn’t touched.

Kendall exhales slow and crosses her arms. She knows how severe she looks like this. She used to practice in front of a mirror, shoulders sharp and the corners of her lips turned down just so. Ruthless, she remembers thinking, and to his credit, Harry looks uncomfortable.

“Do you know what you’re apologizing for? Or are you just paying lip service right now because Glenne yelled at you?” She asks, and Harry shifts his weight and looks briefly up at her ceiling (white and dust free) before focusing his gaze on her again.

“I am sorry,” Harry starts, and Kendall rolls her eyes. “I’m not sorry for worrying about you, though. Even if you don’t want to talk to me. You should talk to someone, yeah? Just thought Glenne could be that person, dunno.”

Kendall tries to ignore the prickling under her skin, but she breaks out into a full body shiver, can’t help feeling exposed, even though Harry’s just edging around—something. She doesn’t know if he knows anything, if he’s just taking a shot in the dark or if he knows, intimately, what’s going on in her head because it’s going on in his, too.

“Maybe I would’ve talked to you if you hadn’t gone over my head,” Kendall bites out, and Harry actually rolls his eyes at her, a bold move for someone who went behind her back just last week.

“We both know you haven’t actually talked to me in years,” Harry says, and Kendall looks down at her bare feet when he won’t stop looking at her. The tan from New Year’s has long faded, and she thinks idly about trying that sunless tanner Kylie recommended.

“Why are you even here, then?”

Harry’s mouth drops open a little, and he looks up at the ceiling again. His nose is too big for his face, and Kendall’s internally jealous of his cheekbones. She steps forward and kisses him.

They’re almost exactly the same height, and Kendall keeps her eyes open, even though Harry’s have fallen shut, in surprise or something else, she isn’t sure.

It’s just a dry press of lips at first, Harry’s chapped against hers. She bites down on his bottom lip after a motionless second, tries to force his hand, because this is something she can lose herself in, that kind of echo kick of arousal ricocheting through her body, like _remember me? Remember this?_

Harry groans, and his hands grip her hips reflexively, but he pulls back, his breath harsh against Kendall’s face.

“Don’t think this is gonna fix anything,” he says, voice low and far off. Kendall can feel the burn starting on her cheeks already, and she steps back so fast she almost trips herself. She’s cold everywhere but her face, and all she wants is to be as far away as possible from everyone she’s ever known.

“Okay,” she says, so fast that it sounds like gibberish. Like someone else is saying it in another language, maybe. “Okay, I think it’s time for you to do that fucking off. Like, forever, I never want to see your face again, lose my number, fuck off.”

She’s got her arms wrapped tight around her waist, and she doesn’t even realize she’s digging her fingernails in until she breaks the skin. She bites her lip at the pain and takes another step back.

Harry’s biting his own lip, and it’s red and a little swollen when he lets it go. Kendall hates him in that second, His bug eyes and red lips and his fuck you big dick and his stupid finger toes and the way he’s looking right through her.

“Ken,” he says, and then stops, like he thinks she’s going to interrupt him. She doesn’t. Just lets the silence stretch out and fill the space between them.

“Please leave,” she says, and she hates the way her voice cracks. She wishes she’d never opened the door, because this just made everything worse. But she can’t do it. Can’t show her hand before Harry shows his, so this is how it ends. Her poker face might be shit, she knows it is, can feel the burn of tears behind her eyeballs, and Harry’s hands are balled into fists like he wants to reach out but knows better, but she’s not spilling her guts to him. Not here. Not now. Not until he goes first. Because she might not talk to him anymore, but it’s not like she knows what’s going through his these days, either.

“Okay,” he croaks. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and backs out of her house, shoulders so tense they’re up by his ears.

Kendall can still smell his shampoo after he leaves.

-

It’s been weeks. Over a month, probably, when she runs into Gigi again. In the bathroom at Nobu, of all places. She hadn’t realized Gigi was in LA. Not that she’d been out much, but between working at holing herself up at home, Kendall’s been in a total bubble. Alone with her many, many thoughts, and pointedly ignoring 90% of her texts.

“Hey, Kenny,” Gigi’s voice is bright and familiar and it hits her in the chest, harder than she expected.

“Hey, sorry,” Kendall says, and her voice sounds rusty with disuse, even to her own ears.

Gigi leans over the sink to look in the mirror and runs a finger over her left eyebrow.

“What’s the name of your eyebrow girl again? Mine are fucking out of control,” Gigi says, digging around in a sleek black clutch.

“Jess at Anastasia,” Kendall says, even though she knows Gigi knows who her brow girl is. They’ve gone together, several times, and Bella’s come with them more than once. She wonders if this is what they’re reduced to now. Vaguely awkward small talk. Questions they both know the answers to.

“Mmm, right,” Gigi says, carefully reapplying her red lipstick in the mirror. She’s practiced and quick, outlining the bow of her lips with careful fingers. Kendall can’t stop looking at her reflection in the mirror. Can’t get the image of Gigi’s kiss swollen lips out of her head, either.

Kendall wonders if this is still a thing, when it’s just the two of them. No Zayn, lip curling up into a smirk that makes Kendall’s stomach turn. Just the quiet drip, drip, drip of the sink in front of Gigi, and how painfully tired Kendall looks to herself in the mirror.

She washes her hands again, just to give herself something to do. Gigi’s looking at her when she reaches for a towel, leaning against the sink, collarbones sharp and defined.

“Missed you, Kenny. You gotta stop going ghost, okay? Z was asking about you the other day.”

Kendall snorts before she can stop herself.

“What?” Gigi asks, arms crossed. She looks vaguely defensive. Kendall doesn’t think she’s projecting.

“Nothing,” Kendall says, and she tries to look blank when she turns to face Gigi again.

“I’m serious, Ken. He was, and I miss you.”

“Sure,” Kendall says, and she’s not imagining it when Gigi sways forward and kisses the corner of her mouth. She stays still for a second, and all Kendall can think about is last time, the way she could taste Gigi’s lipgloss days later and feel Zayn’s eyes burning into her skin.

Kendall shifts and parts her lips and Gigi exhales into her mouth and it’s like dangling one foot over the edge of a cliff and getting a taste of the drop. The slick glide of Gigi’s tongue against hers and the press of her breasts against Kendall’s, the way Gigi’s all soft soft soft and then sharp sharp sharp hipbones, and Kendall wants to crawl inside her, dig her fingers in and never let go.

Gigi pulls back, though, and Kendall realizes that she’s got her pressed up against the sink, their bodies slotted together, soft against soft.

“Missed you, Kenny,” Gigi says again, putting her hands on Kendall’s shoulders before she slides past her and out the door. After a second it’s like she wasn’t even there.

There’s red lipstick all over Kendall’s chin like a brand, stark and obvious against her pale skin.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously posted on tumblr (tiny bits are [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com/tagged/fic)).

It’s weird to be in the same space and to not be having sex with Harry, Kendall thinks. That thought in and of itself is fucking weird, she knows. There’s static between them. It’s not electric, or sexual, or anything like that. Painful awareness, more like. She’s acutely aware of the fact that he’s a row back and a few seats away, hair starting to curl around his ears again, swaying to the music and leaning down so someone else can whisper in his ear.

She’s not jealous, because he isn’t a thing that she wants. Not anymore, and not in reality. In the far off, picture perfect version of her life, he’s the one she ends up marrying. Or living with, at least. But this isn’t that life. She doesn’t want that life, not even theoretically. It’s tiring just thinking about it, makes her feel claustrophobic and vaguely sick to her stomach.

“I can hear you thinking from ten feet away, Kenny,” Glenne says in her ear, breath hot against Kendall’s skin.

Glenne slides her arm around her waist, and Kendall leans into the heat, even though she’s already sweating.

“Music makes me emo,” she says, and she can barely hear herself over everything, but Glenne laughs and rests her head on Kendall’s shoulder.

“Emo? Was that even a thing in your lifetime?”

It’s too easy to elbow Glenne in the stomach and escape the questions that Kendall knows are well-meaning.

“Not that young, jesus. I know Jeff still thinks I’m a toddler, but give me some credit. I totally listened to Fall Out Boy, okay,” she says, and she feels Glenne slip back.

“Mm, credit for the accurate emo band reference,” Glenne says, and Kendall turns back and forces a smile in her direction. Glenne’s already drifting away, back towards Jeff and Harry and the tiny circle that used to include Kendall.

It’s her own fault, she thinks, as Caleb sings gruffly about making conversation and getting out of California. She still feels awkward about kissing Harry in her foyer. Her cheeks burn thinking about it, and it’s hard to stop wondering what he thought about it. If he’s still thinking about it.

-

She leaves early, in the end. It’s easy to slip out. Everyone’s occupied, caught up in Harry’s orbit, and Kendall’s grateful for it for once. Predictably, everyone waiting outside for a glimpse shouts at her about him. She keeps her shoulders straight and strides forward, focuses on the click of her heels against the pavement instead of their voices. She skips Mel’s, begs out and sits on her front steps instead.

LA’s too polluted for stars, but she stares up for a long time, anyway. It’s like, existential, or something. Makes her feel small in the kind of good way, at least. Like she can fuck up over and over again and everything’ll keep spinning because it was never in her control in the first place.

Khloe got her the vodka as a housewarming gift, heavy winks because she wasn’t twenty one yet, even though they both knew she’d been drinking for years. Kendall curls up in bed with it, pouring it delicately into the shot glass Bella brought her back from Italy, as if they weren’t on the same trip.

‘gettin drunk on my own in my own house. 16 yr old me would be proud,’ she sends Bella, like it’ll start to bridge the Gigi-shaped gap that’s been growing between them.

She unbuckles her belt and sighs with relief, traces the red marks on her stomach from her jeans.

‘beauty is pain,’ she sends Harry. She shouldn’t. It’s a huge fucking mistake and she’s not even drunk enough yet to play it off, but she’s still angry on some level. Like he just kept pushing and pushing and then walked away, what the fuck.

-

She gets in another two shots and wriggles out of her jeans before he responds. She stretches out on her bed, clings hard to the space for a second before she lets herself look at his response. Her teeth have gone numb like they always do when she’s on her way to drunk, and it eases the embarrassment from earlier enough to open his message.

‘you make it look easy,’ he’s written, and fuck, she hates him. Not like, hates him, hates him, but. Hates that this is what they’ve turned into, talking around everything. The easy way he drops compliments that belong so far in the past she can hardly comprehend it.

Everything feels shaky for a second, her vision going funny the way it does when she’s so mad she doesn’t know what to do next. She breathes in deep, tries to remember what the therapist she saw last year told her.

“You have to own your feelings. Let yourself feel them. Otherwise you’ll get to a point where you no longer have a choice.”

‘I’m not in love with you,’ she types out. ‘and I don’t think I ever was.’

She rests her phone on her chest. It’s hot from being clutched against her palm. Maybe it’ll overheat, and never turn back on, and she won’t have to see his response ever again. Maybe she can move to like, Alaska, somewhere Harry Styles would never go, and pretend that she doesn’t feel anything at all.

It buzzes against her chest when he answers.

‘I know,’ is all it says, and the typing bubble appears then disappears.

Kendall stares at the screen until her eyes are burning, but Harry doesn’t say anything else.

She takes another shot. Brings up Gigi in her phone. They haven’t talked in a week, their last message just something about Bella’s schedule, like Gigi couldn’t have asked her own sister herself.

‘just told Harry Styles that I’m not in love with him,’ she types out, fingers sweaty against the screen.

She doesn’t even hesitate before hitting send. That therapist would be proud. Maybe. Not that it matters, because she stopped seeing them months ago. Repression is always easier than confrontation. It’s fine.

Cold fear starts creeping down her spine, like she’s finally tipped her hand. Given herself away before she was really ready. As if she’ll ever really be ready, she thinks, thoughts sliding back to the way Gigi always hums against her lips. The way she keeps on taking and keeps on vanishing, like there’s nothing between them at all.

Kendall shoves her phone under her pillow and reaches for the shot glass, but her fingers are clumsy. Heavy with the weight of her bad decisions. She knocks it onto the floor instead, and it feels like a metaphor for her entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm [here](http://polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


	6. Chapter 6

Gigi kissed her first. Gigi was always going to kiss her first, if it was ever going to happen, Kendall knows, because this was something she tucked away. It was easy, because she didn’t like, need to have sex with anyone, not really. It’s nice, when it happens, but she can survive without it. Did survive without it, has survived without it for long stretches. Sometimes it’s harder than others, but overall, on average, she doesn’t need it. Wants it sometimes, sure, but that’s not the same.

Wanting isn’t something she can turn off.

She’s stretched out in bed. Alone in a way that feels safe. The sheets are cool against her skin. She’s naked, because when she’s alone, she can be naked and there’s no one around to assume she’s asking for something with said nakedness.

The ceiling is so white that if she stares at it long enough, everything gets fuzzy and she almost can’t remember if she has her eyes open or closed. She spreads her arms and her legs out so they’re not touching. It’s easier to feel weightless, this way. Takes away her awareness of her own limbs and the way she takes up space.

Her mouth feels dry from the red wine she had at dinner. As a rule, Kendall hates red wine, but Jeff always makes her feel like a little kid, and red wine seems like an adult thing, so she drinks it whenever she’s with him. Shelly was there too, and she kept smiling across the table at Kendall. Kendall can still feel the way she grabbed her forearm before they left and pulled her into a hug. She smelled familiar and expensive in a way that Kendall’s always associated with her mom. She’d let herself sink into Shelly’s arms for a second. Just a second, but it still felt like she was giving something away. Jeff just ruffled her hair and smirked at her before leaving.

Brushing her teeth feels impossible right now, even though Kendall knows it would occupy her mind, if only for a few minutes.

Pulling herself out of her head is hard, though. That’s hard and it’s easier to lay here and pretend she can just melt into the mattress.

She hates Gigi for kissing her, deep down. Kendall hates her for it because now she wants it. Now it isn’t some abstract idea in the depths of her brain. It’s real, it happened, and Kendall wants it now.

It was easier to pretend it wasn’t a thing, before. She just never let her mind drift to it, never let herself think through the possibility that yeah, she wanted that. If she never touched it, never acted on it, then it wasn’t real. She wasn’t denying herself anything if she didn’t know she wanted it, right?

Then Gigi pushed her way in. Crowded up against Kendall in the opulent single person bathrooms post-Victoria’s Secret a year ago, and Kendall hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The way Gigi’s lips slip-slid against hers. The smell of floral shampoo, stuck in her nose for hours after. How Gigi traced her nipple piercing through the thin silk of her dress and smirked against Kendall’s mouth. The way Kendall got herself off, after. Alone in a pretty pink bathroom, her lips still shiny and swollen from Gigi’s mouth.

Kendall drags her hand down the slight curve of her stomach. Her skin’s covered in goosebumps because she can never seem to get the temperature of this new place right.

She hooks her thumbs in the waist of her underwear and snaps then against her skin, the sound loud in the silence of her bedroom.

Sleep is elusive now. She used to be able to sleep anywhere and everywhere, but now she can’t stop thinking about the things she’s done, and the things she wants, and the things she can’t have.

Her phone buzzes on the bedside table. Buzzes. Keeps buzzing. A phone call that she doesn’t want to answer. The wine’s dulled her sense of self-preservation, though, so she reaches over and answers without looking at the screen.

“Kennyyy,” Gigi slurs, her voice too loud in Kendall’s ear.

“You’re drunk,” Kendall says dumbly, and she knows she should hang up now, that if she does, Gigi won’t remember it. Or won’t be stupid enough to bring it up.

“Thinkin about you, though,” she says, and Kendall squeezes her eyes shut.

“Why don’t you call your boyfriend,” Kendall forces out, and she does hang up after that, her fingers sweaty on the screen of her phone. She drops it over the side of the bed, listens to the thud when it hits the floor. It’s probably too much to hope that it’s irreparably broken.

Kendall rolls over onto her stomach and buries her head in her pillow, wills herself to disappear.

It doesn’t work. Never does.

She could like. Move to Paris, or something. Some fashion capital where she can bury herself in work. Away from LA and New York and the constant reminder that Gigi is something she wants.

Her pillows smell strongly of that fake fresh linen scent. She keeps using too many dryer sheets when she does laundry.

She could move to Paris, but LA is home. It gets under her skin sometimes, but she’s put down roots here, even if she’s away half the time. And this is like a safe space. A place that Gigi hasn’t permeated yet. Hasn’t touched or tainted with her hands all over Kendall, or the smell of her shampoo on the pillows in Kendall’s bedroom. She hates that she does this, lets people leave their mark on her. Every time she’s in the foyer, she remembers kissing Harry, and the way he pushed her away. Her cheeks burn thinking about it even now. Weeks later.

In some alternate universe she could reach out and tell him everything. Maybe listen to some of his secrets, too. But not in this one. In this one, she bites her lip until it bleeds, keeps the things she really wants deep inside, because what difference does it make? Gigi will still be Gigi. Out of reach, giggling her way away from Kendall. Half the time she isn’t even sure if it’s Gigi she wants, or if she’s just like—imprinted on her, or something.

Kendall remembers all of her firsts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm [here](polaroidgirlfriend.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
